Aara-Date 2005-03-08-Tu-10-52-DkT

Aaron's Log

Aara-Date 2005-03-08-Tu-11-05-DkT

Second Attempt at attempting to do a Journal Entry, Why? Because it never stops loading ads and when each ad loads it bumps the cursor off, in the middle of typing you make a single mistake, bump the cursor and hit backspace and find yourself on the previous page losing everything you've just written.

Aara-Date 2005-03-09-We-12-12-DkT

This Time every sentence I write I back it up to a text document so when I press backspace without thinking I won't lose everything I wrote a third time.

I'm still too broke to buy a Nintendo DS, I've managed to play my friends there too cool to resist for long, I'll need one soon, hopefully titles I'd like more will come out soon.

Well I've grabbed Zoids Legacy (GBA) yesterday (well two days ago now) and it's pretty much everything I wanted from the game. You can build pretty much any Zoid you want, any colour you want (from a range of eight) and stick whatever guns and special "Dealie Whackers" you want on to it, there are ignorable weight limits but your other stats suffer. The Animations in Battle (and you'll be in battle a lot) are very static, but let's face it you want to customise animal shaped mechs and blow up your foes, not watch a cartoon. I should point out the stats are rather confusing at first so keep your manual handy.

On the Arcade front I've defeated Toru (4th Rival, 1st on Usui) in Initial D (V.3) in my RX-8 (~40,000 points) this would be the fifth or sixth attempt probably more, with quite a few practice (Time Trial) runs in the middle. I stuffed it a little on the second lap with a lack of concentration, I won by a mere 11.1 meters but I'll take it as a win and move on. I've also learnt some things I'll write below, and I'll shift the blame of one of my last defeat to the six or seven year old who interfered with the gear stick while I was on the final lap, cost me victory by 20 meters. Who knows now that I've defeated him I should be able to stop obsessing over it, maybe not playing every time I even get near the machine.

Parents don't take very young children to the arcade, they run around, mess with games other people are playing (and no we don't find it cute and harmless, you just cost us Money) and generally get hurt by trying to jump on Dance Dance machines while they are in use by one of those people who play the game with legs everywhere and the upper body totally still and all concentration on the little arrows raining down (or is it up?) the screen.

Still on Initial D I've defeated Kenji (2nd Rival, 2nd on Myogi) in my Celica (8,000+ points) of course I've only driven the Celica twice as the first three guys are pretty easy (I beat them all first go with the RX-8 ), heck the first four are easy it's Usui that's hard. Kenji's Defeat earned me some new wheels so hopefully it won't break so much traction when cornering. For those who are curious I play default settings except I stiffen the wheel up to 6 in both cars, because it suits my style more. The reason I have two cars for the game is because I wanted to try different styles of car, the RX-8 is a non turbo rear wheel drive with forward engine mount or FR and the Celica GT-Four is a Turbo Charged all wheel Drive front mount, or the Sega Rally Celica. I'm thinking of taking up a FF at some time, or maybe just give one a card-less test drive, I'd like to try Left Foot Braking.

Initial D Hints:

#1 The Course is your main opponent, the Rival is there for pressure, ignore him and worry about the corners. Myogi is the only course where the Rival is your opponent.

#2 For a Quick upgrade remember that a Time Trial is worth 1,000 points for the race, and 2,000 for beating the time limit and you get a extra 500 for a personal best that's a total of 3,500 points! Those Courses have two directions, wet and dry surfaces, and some even have snow (although I believe that it's own course). That's at least 14,000 points for finishing under each condition, at the cost of 4 games. Races give you 1,000 points for the race, 2,000 points for the victory and 10 points every meter (EG 12.5 meters = 125 bonus points).

#3 Moving from Myogi to Usui is a huge jump in difficulty so do at least one practice Time Trial counter clockwise.